My Funny Valentine
by s2lou
Summary: Valentine after Valentine, they meet again. Valentine after Valentine, he lies to her. And yet they can't help but think it's beautiful every time. ShinRan AU. Happy Valentines' Day.


**A/N: This is situated in the same Twenties setting as my One For Sorrow AU. It's ShinRan, however, and it doesn't have the exact same timeline, so I thought I'd post it apart. This fic begins around the same time as the second chapter in One For Sorrow, but largely outgoes it later on. There'll be cameos, though.**

**However. Happy Valentines' Day, minna! And a very, very happy birthday to you, D3athrav3n92. (Gah, such a long name… I should call you D3ath. Agreed?) I probably wouldn't have finished this hadn't it been for you, so be thanked. x3 Many wishes and cookies from me, dear. I hope you like this.**

**Warning–for some Twenties lexical? at the end. Not all readers come from the US.**

**Disclaimer–I own nothing, nada, rien, nichts. The cast is Aoyama-sensei's (He Who Is Being Evil Again, seriously that last file…); the song is Chet Baker's, I think. At least the version I have is of him. –can't resist the trumpet–**

**-**

**My Funny Valentine**

**-**

_My funny valentine _

_Sweet, comic Valentine_

**February 14****th****, 1921**

11.23 p.m.

Kudo Shinichi was tired.

And pissed.

But mostly tired. The teashop wasn't bad, per se, but February was chilly outside the glass doors, which resulted in overheating rooms and huddling costumers seeking warmth, and he honestly hated smoking. He had to, though; it would be deemed suspicious if he didn't. Last thing he wanted was to be spotted by whoever was watching. Hattori might, for all his disguising skills.

He was rather proud of himself this time. He had left behind everything that made him a 'tec, everything that might recall the cop or the bull in him. A simple Burberry–what else against the rain–a cleverly tilted hat, a pair of thin, unobvious, and as such genuine glasses were moulding him in the crowd that surrounded him.

Then again, Hattori was one tough bird. Shinichi had been after him for months and months, and yet he had not yet managed to catch the bootlegger red-handed. Then again, he thought, glancing at the counter's looking-glass at the couple cuddling at a nearby table, who would have thought Hattori –peacock-proud Hattori, smirking, provoking Hattori­– would keep a jane to spend his Sunday afternoons with?

A moll, he'd first thought, but it'd been wrong. The girl was too ordinary-looking, too plainly-dressed, too ponytailed. The way she slid her arm under Hattori's was all wrong, the way she walked, the way her hair would swing when she laughed, the way she _laughed_–this was not how a moll would act. And she kept friends that were much too proper.

It wasn't like Hattori at all to hang out with a girl whose best friend worked in a teashop. Not at all.

From the counter's glass he watched her instead, as she brought them cake and giggled with them for a while, and then was called away. She was pretty, in her own way. Her chocolate-brown bangs fell neatly on her shoulders, and her maid's dress suited her perfectly.

She was assigned to his table, too. As she passed by she noticed his coffee cup was empty and offered a refill, smiling down at him. He handed it to her wordlessly, but she appeared none the more rebuked. The cup was taken away and returned steaming.

"What's your name?" he asked her, but his voice was drowned out by a new costumer calling out, and she excused herself with a smile.

Hattori and his sheba, in the meantime, were preparing to go. Shinichi tilted his hat a little further down on his eyes again as they passed, and gazed after them thoughtfully. He was pretty sure he'd be able to fall back on Hattori's track the very next day; besides, that was a perfectly good cup of coffee on the counter right now.

Let the man have his Sunday.

Shinichi would have his coffee, and perhaps a glint of kindle brown eyes bestowing a smile down on him.

The waitress returned minutes afterwards, to slip the note under his empty cup. He thanked her with a nod, and her customary beam softened to something gentler, corners of the lips easing genuinely up.

"My name's Ran."

_You make me smile with my heart_

**February 14****th****, 1922**

"You were here last year, weren't you?" the waitress asked. Shinichi looked up to brown eyes.

"I… was. Ran, was it?"

She beamed at him. "Yes. Any reason why you only come here on Valentines' Days?" She swiped his glass clear off the table and reached out for a refill. "Might it be because you know we give out free samples that particular day?"

"To couples," Shinichi said. He nodded at the notice hung over the counter. "Very obviously, I am in couple with no one but myself." He took the glass she was handing him and grinned. "Unless you'd want to join me?"

"My shift is not over until an hour," she said–regretfully, it seemed to him. "I appreciate the proposition, however."

"I can wait." Maybe that was pushing it; he really, however, wanted to have a conversation with her, a discussion that might go farther than a few innocent words between the waitress and the costumer. He had come in hope to find Hattori, who seemed to have disappeared from San Francisco these last four months.

That Ran person might know where he was–at the very least, where he might find Hattori's old girlfriend.

"I… are you really willing to wait?"

"Sure."

The smile that was returned to his outshone the pale winter sun that glistened on the teashop's glass door. "Then I will hurry."

Never had an hour felt so long. Shinichi watched her for the most part, noticing what he had not cared to notice one year before–how her black waitress skirt fell sagely over her knees, but every time she spun around the silk-stockinged thigh showed for a fraction; the way her hair would swing up and down her back, rhythmically, as though dancing the fox-trot; the way her nose wrinkled at the smell of too-strong coffee.

She was pretty, but it went farther than that. There was a certain grace to her poise, to her walk; something he thought he could define, but couldn't quite bring himself to. Sometimes, she would look around and find his eyes, and her smile after that was just a little brighter.

At five-thirty he watched her disappear into the back, and she reappeared minutes afterwards, no longer wearing her waitress' outfit, but a plain striped dress and a raincoat whose belt she did not fasten.

She approached his table with a smile. "You did not tell me your name."

"I'm Shinichi." She had not bothered to give him her full name; and neither would he. Hattori might have mentioned it to her; he might be doing the greatest mistake he had ever done–she might even be a moll, for all her genuine aspect.

Or maybe that was just his imagination working for his brain. Ran seated beside him, pointing out to him the tastiest samples on their menu, was nothing like a gangster's girl.

Maybe he should just enjoy the moment.

_Your looks are laughable _

_Unphotographable_

**February 14****th****, 1923**

"It seems that we always meet on Valentines' Day."

The girl in the bronze coat and matching scarf turned to look at him, brown locks straying on cheeks pinked by February's cold, lips opening in a puzzled moue that morphed into a surprised smile. "… Shinichi-san?"

She looked a little older. The year before she had told him she was twenty-two.

"… Are you not working at the teashop?" he pushed his hands down in his pockets, trying to ignore the stirring guilt that flashed through him when her eyelashes fluttered in upset–though guilt of what, he was not certain.

"I was. I was walking home to dinner." Her cheeks reddened a little more. "You did not come this year."

"I… was on duty," Shinichi said, which was the truth. He had not been able to get himself a day off, and when he had reached the teashop they had told him Ran had left minutes before. "If… do you have an appointment tonight?"

"No–well, I did. Kazuha-chan was supposed to eat with me but Heiji-kun came back from New York and–I'm sorry. This must sound gibberish to you. I do not have any appointment."

"I am glad to hear it." Though, again, not quite certain what he was referring to. "Might it be possible for me to make up for my absence at the teashop by inviting you to dinner?" Her lips parted, and for a second he thought she would refuse.

"I…"

She would say no.

"I–of course. Of course."

He found himself grinning, taking her arm, leading her away. "I know of a fine restaurant nearby. Or is it one you have a keenness for?" There was none, not particularly. She was laughing, and took the offered arm with overmuch amusement.

Around dessert he brought the conversation back onto _Kazuha-chan and Heiji-kun_. "Friends of yours?"

"Oh, yes–yes, Kazuha-chan is my best friend. Heiji-kun is her childhood friend–her fiancé. They have been engaged many years, but Kazuha-chan's father died when she was fifteen, and she couldn't have enough money to–am I babbling again? I am _so_ sorry. I–"

"Not at all," Shinichi said, twirling his ice cream spoon between his fingers. He felt _he_ should be the one giving an apology. "You interest me–interest me greatly. Please continue."

She gratified him with another of her brighter-than-the-sun smiles.

"The main point is, Kazuha has to work as an usherette in a theater, and Heiji-kun is concerned about it. He says it might not be the right place to work because people might worry her, though Kazuha-chan can protect herself, but he _insists_ on working a lot and earning enough to marry her and live with her." She beamed at him. "I find that most kind of him."

"Very kind indeed," Shinichi murmured.

Y_et you're my favourite work of art_

**February 14****th****, 1924**

"Here he is," Shiratori said, eyes drifting over to where Hattori sat, legs crossed, glasses counting three in front of him. An oldish waiter was showing them to a table not far-off, one row away from the dancefloor. "What's this place called again?"

"The Magpies and Crows," Shinichi said distractedly. Toyama was sitting beside Hattori, and Ran and another man were with them.

"Do we know they've got permission for selling alcohol?"

"Hmm." The other man he did not think he had even seen. He did not look Japanese. He was also way too close to Ran. The waiter came by with their drinks–Shiratori had ordered hooch to keep the pretence, Shinichi had stuck with coffee–and departed with no odd looks.

"Looks like we're clear," Shiratori said. "Want to get to him now?"

"No. I've heard about this place–it's not a speakeasy, it's got permission. And look at the room–it's not a ritzy place. I dunno how they managed to get those papers. And Hattori hasn't come here without any purpose."

"Your point is, If we see him get into any kind of suspicious contact with the owners, we fall on their backs."

"… We'll wait until Hattori's come out," Shinichi said thoughtfully. "Then we'll come back for the bar. _If_ they haven't closed up shop in the meantime."

"Yeah. Who're those two molls they've got with them? 'cause that other man is a bootlegger, too. Comes from New York. I think I remember his face."

"There are only two solutions–either they've come to bargain with the bar, in which case we pinch the whole lot. If it's only a business meeting or a _friendly reunion_, the place's clear." He looked at Ran–the gentle smile lighting her features, a dimple digging in her cheek, the excited wonder of her eyes' as she looked round the floor. "I dunno who the flappers are. Probably janes they picked up on the way."

It was not the first time he lied about this.

He figured it would not be the last.

A few minutes elapsed. The two girls got up to dance–the Charleston, arms and legs swinging and eyes laughing as their breath escaped them, and jazz had never been such a frenzy, such a wonderful drought as when Ran danced to it, her long brown hair grazing her shoulders and back.

Try as he might, Shinichi could not quite concentrate on Hattori. Shiratori's hand on his arm snapped him back to reality.

"Hey, look. That bartender is speaking to them."

Apparently it was about their drinks. Hattori was saying something–about liquor, Shinichi was certain he saw his lips frame the word–and the blue-eyed man shook his head, grinned apologetically, and strolled away, avoiding skilfully the dancers in his way.

"Looks like the place's clear after all," Shiratori murmured.

"Might be a set-up," Shinichi muttered, but Ran was directly in his sight again, and the dark, sweet jazz danced with her, running like smooth silk down her arms and her hips, danced with her and fitted her minute movement with loving hands.

I_s your figure less than Greek…_

**February 14****th****, 1925**

When he showed up at the teashop it was with the slight dread that Ran may not be there this year. One full year had passed and anything might have happened–she might have found another job or fell in love with someone or gotten married or _any_thing–

But she was there, in her waitress' apron, and quite the miracle–to find someone at the same place every year and _find_ them unchanged.

She caught sight of him, leaning against the shopwindow, the door slightly ajar. He mentioned her outside–he would not come in this year. And she glanced at someone inside, said a few words he could not hear, and stepped outside.

"Ran-san. Listen, I–"

She just looked at him.

And it was easy to understand, after that–how much she knew now. There was something in the pose of her hands, one overlapping the other, in the silent curve of her closed mouth, in the still poise–that wasn't what she had been one year before at all.

"Ran-san–"

"Shinichi-san," she said, and her voice didn't even sound angry, didn't even sound on edge, didn't sound_ any_thing to be truthful, "I ask you never to come here again. Ever." Her eyelids lowered a fraction, and even the brown eyes were gone, replaced with the look of the hurt and the betrayed he had never been able to bear.

His voice, in comparison, was white and pale and expressionless. "… I'm sorry."

The ensuing chuckle was self-deprecating. "For what?" One hand twitched, squeezed the other, and let go hurriedly as his own eyes settled there for a moment. "Fooling me? I must not be the first, must I?"

"I did not–" and then he realized it was hopeless. And untrue. He _had_ used her, and fooled her, for all the times he had enjoyed her company. "I came to tell you this. I apologize."

She nodded bleakly. "You may mean it, Shinichi-san. I don't know. I accept your apology–if you mean it, I certainly accept it. But please don't ever come here again. Don't come any closer to me again."

She walked back into the teashop and closed the glass door behind her. She pulled the curtain close, and to one colleague who asked her to draw it back, he heard her reply the sunshine was too strong and it would get too stuffy.

(So much can happen in one year.)

_Is your mouth a little weak_

_When you open it to speak_

**February 14****th****, 1926**

A dark-skinned hand grabbed his arm and dragged him into the alley by the teashop before Shinichi had even a chance to resist. When he saw who it was, however, he didn't resist at all.

"Hattori."

"Kudo." The word was spat out and disgusted, meant to be so.

Shinichi sighed a little and burrowed his hands in his raincoat's pockets. It was a rainy, disagreeable Valentines' Day; he didn't even know whether or not he wanted to see Ran. Last year had been a fiasco and he had no wish to repeat the experience. "What _do_ you want? You know I'm still on your assignment."

Hattori all but snarled at him. "Sure, Kudo. What are you gonna do, pinch me? You're off-duty and I have a gun." It was, unfortunately, true. The Hattori line had not given any result in years. So far as Shinichi could have found out while he was still following him around, the guy was clean.

"I'm sure you didn't invite me in for tea. What do you want? Bump me off in a dark alley?"

"You give up on Neechan."

"What?"

"Neechan. Ran. I've seen your little stalker business all those years. Last year she came home so lost she couldn't go to work for a full week. She said you might frame her simply because she's _linked_ with us. Simply because she's _'Zuha's best friend."_

"I won't frame her for anything," Shinichi said tiredly. "I never intended to. If I did I would have done it years ago, while she still–trusted me. Don't think I'm stupid, Hattori. And since _when_," he emphasised as Hattori exclaimed angrily, "has a bootlegger cared anything about morality?"

He escaped a punch by a close breadth.

"You bastard," Hattori hissed. "I thought the fuzz was supposed to be on level with the rest of us."

"Not with criminals."

"_Neechan_ is not a criminal–"

"She's linked with you. You said it. As such she is suspect. It is my _job_ to track suspects and question them." The sky was beginning to rumble. It would rain soon, Shinichi reflected, and it was cold in the secluded alley. For a second he wished for the warmth of the teashop, and Ran's smile. Oh _god_.

"So you've seduced her and now you're snubbing her–that's all she is to you, a _fucking pushover?"_

"You have no lessons to teach me."

"_Necchan_ never knew _anything_ about the bootleg system. _Ever._ She had no idea I was in it. She was just 'Zuha's best friend and _you_ came and destroyed that. If–" Hattori's green eyes were darkened in anger, "_if_ I ever see you again, when we're passing bootleg or otherwise, I fucking swear I _will_ kill you."

"Go right ahead," Shinichi murmured.

Hattori watched him in silence. "Look at you," he spat. "Four years ago you would have latched onto me about the bootleg system. Now _look_ at you, you're just balled up. You used to be the fuzz­'s Bee's Knees –now you're just nothing."

Shinichi gave him one look and lit a cigarette. The smoke lifted, grey and light, and it began to rain. He really hated smocking.

_Are you smart?_

**February 14****th****, 1927**

"–sometimes you think you've lost it, and you haven't," the bartender of the Magpies and Crows said, filing his glass again. He looked a little like him. Earlier in the evening, Shinichi would have cared; but this was his third drink and he still remembered what he had come here to forget. He looked around hazily.

"Do you have permission for selling alcohol here?"

"This place is _not_ a speakeasy," the man said. The blue eyes were laughing though the tone was serious. "Others than you have gone in that territory before. Don't ask, and I won't ask what a bull like you is doing drinking alcohol on the evening of Valentines' Day."

Shinichi's tried managed to classify the given information and he took a fanciful sip of his drink. "How do you know I'm a policeman?"

The bartender wrinkled his nose, and laughed. "We can smell 'em miles around here. And you're a famous man, Kudo Shinichi-san." He filled a glass for himself and busied himself with the cork, eyes never leaving Shinichi's face. "I have my contacts."

The clink of the bottle being put down was a little ominous.

"Would it be presumptuous of me to ask if this is about a girl?"

By this time Shinichi had downed two-thirds of his glass and he couldn't have cared less if the bartender started laughing at him when he told him. The man was just another stranger he would never see or remember again, unless he had to come by to inspect the place once. "… I lied to her."

The man seemed to go a little still. "Once?"

"Many times over."

For a while they sipped their drinks in common silence.

"Can I give you one advice?" the man asked finally, deliberately, and put his empty glass down with a decisive gesture. The lights had subdued in the bar, and the trumpet was playing in Shinichi's back, slow and luring and deeper than it sounded.

Shinichi shrugged. He had run out of advices long ago. "Sure."

"Sometimes you feel like the whole thing's gone down, and often it has. Sometimes there's nothing you can do to make it right again, and the best you can do is to simply drop it. –But sometimes there's one little thing you'd overlooked, one thing you thought wasn't so important as it really is, and even if it's not enough to make everything better yet–well, it's a start, at least."

The words sank in for a long minute. The bartender served other costumers, most of which he seemed to know very well, but his blue eyes never seemed to quite stray from Shinichi's Burberry-clad figure on his high stool, both elbows propped on the counter.

"This came from self-experience?" Shinichi asked him a while later, when he settled before him again. He felt heavier, somehow, but not badly. The way one feels when one has drunk too much–or, in his case, a bit too seldom in years.

The man's face softened a little, and, without the maniacal grin, looked a little less frozen. "… maybe."

"… I'll take another drink."

"Sure thing."

_Don't change a hair for me,_

_Not if you care for me_

**February 14****th****, 1928**

The Magpies and Crows was crowded and the bartender wasn't anywhere in sight. Shinichi scanned the dancefloor, finally spotting him on the estrada, playing the trumpet–over the few times he had come back to the bar in this last year, the place had just remained the same. It was a comforting routine, in the greys of winter.

He had never asked any names, and had never been perturbed by the fact that a man who looked enough like him to be a sibling knew his, without returning the favour.

He slid by to a table close to the dancefloor, asked a drink from the old gentleman who waited patiently on him, and looked around. The place was packed, and never had the band played so furiously. The dancers swung around the flood with slightly mad gestures, swaying hips and rolling shoulders and…

… was that Ran?

For all of a minute Shinichi remained sitting, staring, watching brown hair and brown eyes and a face that was way too animated to be so without the aid of liquor.

He still vaguely remembered his feelings the day they had met–the passing thoughts on the girl, the fact that she was quite pretty in her own right, the slight twist of her hips when she walked. But now she was many, many years older, and she was a very beautiful woman.

So he just sat there and stared.

(–because it'd been too long really–three years, save for a few chance meetings in the street that had only resulted in turned backs–because he'd never thought it'd come down to this in the end–never thought, years and years ago when she was but a passing acquaintance still–this: being breathless when not looking at her, being lifeless when not walking beside her.)

So he stood after a while, leaving his drink alone and strayed on his table, and slid to the side of the dancers toward her. She was dancing with a girl who mustn't be much older not younger than they were, and who felt oddly familiar–probably, though, because she was about as alike her than the bartender was alike himself.

They were laughing, but Ran's laugh was choked away when Shinichi grabbed her hand and led her to the center of the floor.

"Shin–"

"Shh."

He took her hand _within_ his, not into his, and curled the other around her hip. She needed but little coaxing, gentle; her pupils were dilated almost to black and her cheeks were tinged with red. Soon her eyes had closed slightly and her head was tilted over his shoulder.

Bodies pressed together, not close enough to more than simple brushing of cloth, but palm against palm and fingers tightly intertwined. The jazz splayed all around them, coating them with dark sweetness, and the Charleston seeped into their limbs until they were spinning round and breathless with speed.

It yet came that the trumpet stopped.

And the dancers stopped also. And Ran stilled between his hands, and jerked away with a gasp, and brown eyes fluttered over his with startled wonder. Pink cheeks reddened some more and that was simply irresistible.

She was stunning, and Shinichi's brain decided to go on vacation.

(She tasted like the alcohol he hadn't touched that evening–dark and bitter and sweetly _addictive_, and he stifled a sob in her mouth.)

_Stay, little Valentine, stay _

_Each day is Valentines' Day_

**February 14****th****, 1929**

There was something very, very wrong with this day.

The whole of San Francisco police had been called to duty over the afternoon. They had listened to the news with the distant unbelief one feels when announced a catastrophe, a bleed, a loss–Chicago–Al Capone–gunfire–seven people dead–_seven people dead–_

–and nothing to be done, nothing except sit back and still, and listen to the prattling rain on the windowpanes.

Tiring as would be walking home, he had been glad to see his shift end. It was cold and damp outside, and the tram was crowded, and his street was deserted, but at the end, at least, there would be home and warmth.

There was also a meeting he had not expected, nor had dared expect these last months.

Ran was standing under his door, wrapped in a brown-red coat and watching him come by with what looked like slight apprehension. When he reached her she straightened a little, but otherwise did not appear to intend doing anything else.

But that he could do for her. "Ran-san–"

"Shinichi-san." She spared him a quick, small smile that soon faded and left place for concern. "I–I heard the news on the radio. I was worried–I thought you might not be… I thought you might need–company." She seemed to sink with every word, and even more so when he chuckled self-deprecatingly.

"I won't say that I don't," he admitted impishly. It did not explain what she was doing here.

Apparently she knew that, too. "I turned twenty-nine a few weeks ago," she said.

… now _that _was random. "Congratulations," he said mechanically, at a loss.

Her lips twitched slightly. "Thank you. I… I figured that after twenty-nine years of existence I could see what it was I wanted. And take it. Instead of what people say is good, right, better for me." She seemed to hesitate on the last straw. "If your offer from last year still stands."

Shinichi thought of dilated brown eyes and the bitter taste of alcohol against his lips and into his mouth, and, later, the damp glow of a streetlamp and grey steps and a turned-down proposal. "It does," he breathed. "Oh god, it certainly does."

That was certainly a smile breaking in now. "… Good."

He found himself smiling also. That day might not be so bad after all. "Good." What he really meant was _I think I want to kiss you now,_ but there would be time for that later.

Oh, god–looking at Ran now, a genuine smile on her lips and stubbornly not looking up to meet his eyes–there would be time for _any_thing.

_Each day is Valentines' Day_

-

_(Bull–a policeman or law-enforcement FBI officer._

_Moll–a gangster's girl._

_Bootleg–illegal liquor under the Prohibition._

_Sheba–girlfriend._

_Speakeasy–an illicit bar selling bootleg liquor._

_Ritzy–Elegant. (From the hotel. The Ritz. In Paris, y'know?)_

_Flappers­–the 'modern' girls of the Twenties._

_Janes–women._

_Pinch–arrest._

_On level–honest._

_Pushover–a person easily convinced or seduced._

_Balled up–confused, messed up.)_

_-_

**… wha****t. It IS still Valentines' Day in my time zone. Don't look at me like that, will ya?**

**However, that was fun. And I couldn't help including Kaito much more than I was originally supposed to –le sigh– a One For Sorrow update should come by tomorrow, by the way. Or the day after that.**


End file.
